Place of Changing Winds ‘Between Two Mountains’ Pinot Noir 2023

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Place of Changing Winds is roughly equidistant between Mount Macedon and Mount Bullengarook, hence the name of this cuvée, which is essentially the most representative Pinot of the season. It’s a fine, textural Pinot produced from all the estate’s plots (including the highest-density vines), save what went into the tiny Beyond the Forest cuvée. It spent 18 months maturing in Stockinger casks with 50% new oak (although this new component was a 1,000 cask, so it has very little impact). It’s a wine that will drink well young and has significant cellaring potential. It was bottled in January 2024.

An industry retrospective & economic reality check

Back in 1998 the 2025 Wine Industry Strategy was released. All sorts of numbers were bandied about, including new planting area to be reached by 2025. That target was hit in either the year 2000 or 2001. The growth was insane and often ill-considered.

It had been a dry few years following the wet 1996 and sites that were swamps in a wet year were being planted by those new to regions like the Yarra Valley.

Vine material was not always of the best quality, and, vineyard preparation often followed a recipe. That is simply what was done.

With such rapid expansion, the end result was the wrong varieties were often planted on bad sites, and, the skill to nurture vines through their early years was not available.

The reality is the industry is rooted, there is an incredible number of wineries that are simply not viable, while we celebrate makers of good vino who keep their prices down, most of the time they’re living on the edge. Making 50c off a $30 bottle of wine.

Flood, frost, fire, phylloxera, global warming, and, drought making the odds of success at the roulette table much more appealing.

All of this means that of the innumerable parts of the vineryard / winery system a winery can pay attention to many just can’t be achieved through lack of finances and time.

Enter Rob Walters and his partner Kate Millard. In 2011 with the help of Michael Dhillon of Bindi, they found a site to plant in Bullegranook, Macedon.

Planting a small vineyard with up to 30,000 vine per hectare requiring several times the standard labour to manage, is economic insanity.

Passion and cashflow from other sources, turning a small fortune into a minuscule one is the driver for this project just like so many other wine ventures.

An incredible amount of thought has gone into this project, with both feet firmly all in, applying a whole of system approach that any bean counter would consider crazy.

The Place of Changing Winds is starting to reveal its potential.

Rob being an importer of some of the world’s best wines has had exposure to some of the great wine minds. They have shared their wisdom and contributed to this unique project.

There may be things about the project that people will find confusing or disagree with. What you have to admire is the single-minded intent of making the best glass of vino they can. And, like so many in the industry the sacrifices they are willing to make to get there.

These early results are showing great promise.

About Place of Changing Winds

From Rob Walters:

Place of Changing Winds is an organic, high-density vineyard located in Bullengarook, a small hamlet in the Macedon Ranges of Victoria. Changing Winds takes its name from the original inhabitants, the Wurundjeri people, who named the place where the vines are currently planted Warekilla (or Place of Changing Winds). This characteristic still holds true today.

Situated at 500 metres above sea level, the ancient soils here are riddled with quartz, quartzite and sandstone and only Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is grown. The vines are planted very closely at a range of densities—from 12,000 to 33,000 vines/ha. The average density is over 15,000 vines/ha. Through decades of research and engagement we have developed our own version of organic practice, a model specifically adapted to our place and our vision. This model is designed to produce wines of the highest possible quality and the maximum expression of place.

In the Vineyard

Our system of practice has come out of research into historic practice, close observation of many great growers, and trial and error in our place.

Our practices include:

· Super high-density plantings: vines planted at 12,500, 14,000, 20,000, 25,000, and 33,000 vines/ha.

· Extremely low yield per vine—currently <250gm per vine (mainly driven by competition but also our soils and practices).

· Organic certified.

· Poussard pruning for five years now. Essentially, we form a two- or three-arm goblet, which is pruned in a way to maximise sap flow and minimise wood disease. This is a much more labour-intensive type of pruning, but the health benefits for the vine are significant.

· High canopy, with plaiting and arching of vines—no trimming.

· Co-plantation of plant material for part of the vineyard.

· An organic compost program designed to stimulate life in the soil, not vigour.

· We do a lot of work by hand.

In fact, across the entire vineyard, apart from some cultivation and organic treatments by tractor in some areas, everything is done by hand. This includes pruning, shoot thinning, lateral removal, hand weeding, arching shoots, shoot positioning and picking. We also do a great deal of our spraying by backpack on foot. We estimate that we visit each of our vines around ten times per year for some kind of manual work (by hand). There are also parts of the vineyard that have no tractor work at all – i.e., everything is done by hand or with a winch. All this is both for precision and to minimise compaction.

· Where we do use a tractor, it is a very light, <700kg machine on Caterpillar tracks, again to minimise compaction. It can run over your foot without injury.

· We also rarely use contract labour—only for some hand weeding and lateral removal—to ensure the standard of our work is extremely high.

· All of this work requires more than one, directly employed full-time person per hectare of vines. The resulting fruit cost is in the realm of $25-30K/tonne at the moment.

· The Estate wines are all grown, made and bottled, via our own bottling line, on-site. (The Syrah wines are also made and bottled by us.)

These practices haven’t come from nowhere. They are what I have observed at the Estates of a number of great growers, and those I have seen achieve outstanding results. Of course, I did not see all of these practices used at one single producer, and we have adapted them to our place.

In the Winery

More to come.

The 2022 Vintage at Place of Changing Winds

The 2022 season demanded a huge amount of work from the POCW vineyard team. The long, slow ripening season was the second of three consecutive La Niña vintages, and harvest was even later than 2021, beginning in the third week of April (so, very late!). In the end, thanks to meticulous canopy management, very low yields and a few warm days at the very end of the season, the Place of Changing Winds team harvested a small crop of perfectly clean, ripe fruit.

The bunches were once again very small (average 46 grams—tiny!), and each parcel was picked separately as each arrived at maturity. In the end, 7.2 tonnes of Pinot and 2.2 tonnes of Chardonnay were harvested—at an average of just over 200 grams of fruit per vine. To give that very low number some context, when you convert these yields to hectolitres per hectare (hl/ha), you arrive at a figure of less than 20hl/ha—roughly half the quantity permitted in Burgundy’s Grand Cru vineyards.

The wines: In 2022, Place of Changing Winds made a Larderdark Chardonnay as well as two Pinot Noirs: a vineyard-wide blend under the Between Two Mountains label and a tiny, single parcel cuvée from a plot of north-facing vines that was bottled under a new label, Beyond the Forest. This latter wine has the distinction of receiving the highest-ever rating for an Australian Pinot Noir on The Wine Front. There is no High Density this year, nor will there be one from 2023. This is because the estate’s highest-density vines are always the last to ripen, and in the cool, late seasons of ’22 and ’23, the fruit from these vines did not reach the point where they justified a separate cuvée. The fruit, therefore, went into the Between Two Mountains blend. Remember, however, that all the vines at Place of Changing Winds are high density!

Both 2022 Pinots have wonderful finesse and perfume, while the Chardonnay is a powerful yet racy wine with a lot of character. All three are the product of the place, a no-compromise approach in the vines and cellar and, of course, the long 2022 season. This release also sees the return of the Tradition label—the first release of the red since 2019 and the first white Tradition ever. Both are superb.

Where in the World is Place of Changing Winds?

Place of Changing Winds is in Bullengarook within the Macedon Ranges, one of Victoria’s cool climate wine regions. Look to the north and a little west of Melbourne.